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Poll deals climate change blow for Mitt Romney

26 September 2012

MORE bad news for Mitt Romney&colon; the Republican party’s scepticism about climate change seems likely to play badly with voters who haven’t yet decided who to back in November’s US presidential election.

A new poll, run by Yale University and George Mason University in Virginia, has found that, when it comes to their views on climate change, “undecideds” look remarkably similar to supporters of Barack Obama.

Of the 1061 people polled, about three-quarters were judged likely to vote, based on their registration, stated intentions and past turnout. Among them, just 27 per cent of Romney backers believed global warming was human-caused, compared to 65 per cent of the Obama supporters.

Of the 87 undecideds who were likely voters in the sample, 65 per cent believed global warming was human-caused, and 61 per cent said the issue would help guide their vote. “We’d have expected them to be somewhere in the middle,” says Anthony Leiserowitz, who heads the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. “But we find they’re very similar to likely Obama voters.”